The oddest advert to ever grace the front page of a regional newspaper?

I wasn’t convinced this advert was for real when it first began circulating on footie forums, and then, inevitably, on Twitter.

Here’s the front page of Thursday’s Scunthorpe Telegraph:

Look at the advert on the right-hand side. Looks a bit bland, doesn’t it? But it’s not the design which is interesting, so much as the words:

As determined efforts to follow up a chance encounter go, it’s right up there with hiring a plane and flying a message over Scunthorpe’s ground at their next home game. And who knows, perhaps even more expensive: According to the 2008 Northcliffe rate card, a half-page ad run-of-paper costs £849. That ad is smaller, who knows what’s happened to ad rates, but it is on the front page … That’s one heck of a message Amanda has to pass on. Obviously, the actual advert in the paper had her phone number on it….

Here’s hoping that the lad’s mate was really a fireman … (and that the Telegraph follows this up as a story next week)…